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Where Bike Planning and GIS…Cross Paths

Here at HHF, being a part of any effort to make Honolulu more bike-friendly is top-of-mind. In 2012, our firm updated the City and County of Honolulu’s O‘ahu Bike Plan. The aim of this plan is to help Honolulu conceptualize an island community where bicycling is a safe, viable, and popular travel choice for residents and visitors of all ages. As part of the O‘ahu Bike Plan, HHF researched and developed a GIS dataset representing existing and proposed bike facilities (racks, lanes, paths and routes) called O‘ahu Bikeways Map.

The O‘ahu Bike Plan was prepared by HHF Planners and was published in 2012 by the City and County of Honolulu

The O‘ahu Bikeways Map is user-friendly. We used the map for our Bike to Work Day 2014 adventure in the previous post.

Here’s another example of how to use O‘ahu Bikeways Map: if you wanted to bike from Mānoa to Waikīkī, you could use the “Existing Bike Facilities” layer on the bikeways map to plan your route. This feature class contains attributes such as: bike facility name, a description that lists start and end points, facility type (route, path, or lane) jurisdiction/ownership and facility length. Here are three easy steps to plan your route

Choose what “Layers” you would like to use on the top right hand corner of the screen

Zoom into the area you would like to view

Find the bike routes, paths, and lanes you would like to use and click on them to see details, so you can plan your bike ride accordingly

O‘ahu Bikeways Map is a good resource for finding bike routes, paths, and lanes; as well as other bike facilities on O‘ahu

Proposed facilities on the bikeways map were identified to plan for effective connectivity of rail to existing lanes, paths and routes around O‘ahu. The O‘ahu Bikeways Map proposed facilities (i.e. feature class) contains generally the same attributes as existing features – facility name, description, type and jurisdiction.

A snapshot of the interaction O‘ahu Bike Map from the City and County of Honolulu HOLIS GIS website

For the more sophisticated GIS users:

Aside from the bikeways map, the City and County of Honolulu has utilized GIS data developed by our firm in several formats including the O‘ahu Bike Map and the Honolulu Rail Transit Map. A great addition to this is the Honolulu Land Information System website (HOLIS), a one stop shop for all City and County of Honolulu-related GIS information. In keeping with the changing times, HOLIS now makes the bike facility dataset available as an ArcGIS feature service so every GIS user can easily add the data to their mapping projects. With just a few quick clicks of the mouse you could have a neat map up and running.

Click on the X for the Feature Service that you want to add (not all maps have Feature Service option). Once you click on X you will be taken to a new page with feature service info.

Click on the light blue open button dropdown menu and select open in open in AcrGIS for Desktop.

The file will download. Make sure that ArcMAP is already open on your computer before continuing. Click on the downloaded feature file (.pitem) and the feature will pop up on your ArcMap.

Add a basemap as well and you’ve got a nice map with only a few clicks!

At HHF Planners, we are proud of our partnership with the City and County of Honolulu and feel fortunate to have a city GIS department (@HNL_GIS) that values being on the cutting edge of an ever changing GIS landscape. Follow #mapoahu on Twitter to keep up with the latest info about O‘ahu maps.

To see more on transportation planning and alternative transportation options, check out our past blogs:

Rob James is HHF’s resident jack-of-all-trades, and an expert all-around: an HHF Associate specializing in facilities, land use, and federal planning; and head of GIS and information technology resources.